Attitudinal Biases Research Articles

Accuracy of cancer-risk assessment in primary care practice.

Primary care physicians (PCPs) are expected to play a central role in assessing cancer risk. This study was designed to evaluate how accurately PCPs would triage individuals at increased risk for cancer when presented with clinical vignettes. Surveys evaluated practice demographics, attitudes, and responses to clinical scenarios. Answers were compared with guidelines and graded for consistency with the risk assessment. PCPs were inaccurate in assessing risk (p < 0.0001) and inconsistent in recommending screening (p < 0.001). Older physicians were more consistent (p < 0.02). No attitudinal bias was identified. Continuing education of PCPs is important for cancer-risk assessment and management.

Efficacy of Moist Heat Pack Application Over Static Stretching on Hamstring Flexibility

Inadequate flexibility is a contributing factor to muscle injury, especially with respect to the hamstring muscle group. Simple therapeutic regimens capable of increasing hamstring flexibility may reduce the injury potential of athletes with below-average hamstring flexibility or history of injury. This study compared 30 seconds of static stretching with 20 minutes of heat application on hamstring flexibility. A secondary purpose was to determine the relationship between the subjects attitude toward each treatment and the efficacy of treatment. Thirty undergraduate student athletes who were current members of a Midwestern collegiate football team participated in a 2 (treatment: heat vs. stretching) by 2 (coun-terbalanced order: heat first vs. stretching first) repeated-measures design. Results indicated that significant benefits to increase hamstring flexibility could be gained by using moist heat packs in comparison with static stretching despite a perceived attitudinal bias in favor of stretching. These findings may have implications for orthopedic fitness as well as injury prevention for an athlete with prior hamstring injury or inadequate flexibility.

Understanding Party Identification: A Social Identity Approach

Social identity theory holds that individuals derive their self‐concept from knowledge of their membership in a group (or groups) and that they place value and emotional significance on that group membership, with resulting perceptual and attitudinal biases. Individuals favor the in‐group to which they belong which they define against a relevant out‐group. In this study, a partisan social identity scale was used to reinterpret perceptual features of partisanship through the lens of social identity theory. The social identity of political independents was also examined in an effort to explain the anomalous behavior and identity of partisan leaners. Social identity theory provided a viable alternative framework for understanding the common bipolarity of perceptions regarding the two major U.S. political parties. In addition, an independent social identification may, in part, explain the identity of partisan leaners.

In Loring Park

To the Editor. —Although we are well aware that a poem is not meant to convey a scientific or medical account on a particular issue, we are concerned that attitudinal bias and misinformation can be perpetrated by your inclusion of In Loring Park 1 in JAMA . And my heart grows sad at the coming sorrow Of the hopeful eggs in your broken basket; They will never know the joy of the arrow's Prick come to waken them to their great task... While we would not presume to question Dr Coe's knowledge base concerning the sexuality and fertility potential of women with disabilities, we can state that in our work as specialists in disability medicine, it is a frequent and all-too-common occurrence for women with disabilities to be judged infertile and asexual by both society and the health care professions. With rare exceptions, most women with disabilities have the potential to

Effects of issue‐related attitude on readers’ comprehension and judgments of unbiased text

Abstract To learn maximally from texts centering on controversial topics, readers must suspend attitudinal biases in the interest of objectivity. The present study examines the extent to which issue‐related attitudes influence readers’ comprehension and retention of information presented in an impartial text. It expands upon previous research that has yielded equivocal findings by considering readers’ (a) ego‐involvement with the issue, (b) prior knowledge, and (c) purpose for reading. In an immediate and delayed recall phase, readers opposing nuclear power were compared with those not opposed to it on a series of dependent measures that involved either low‐level outcomes or judgmental tasks. No effect of issue‐related attitude was found for the selective encoding or recall of low‐level data; however, when open‐ended questions required readers to make sum‐mative text‐based decisions about the issues, their protocols exhibited attitude‐consistent response tendencies in the immediate learning phase. The fin...

AIDS knowledge and attitudes among adolescents in the rural southwest.

A survey of adolescents living in rural southwestern towns demonstrated their knowledge of the basic transmission routes of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Nevertheless, misconceptions and attitudes, which may interfere with adopting safe behaviors, persist. Significant differences in knowledge did exist between the ethnic groups surveyed. Further, American Indian and black adolescents were more likely to express attitudinal biases against people who have AIDS. We conclude that current media efforts have been successful in communicating basic information regarding transmission, but there may exist a need for ethnically specific programs that focus on the misconceptions and attitudes surrounding AIDS.

Terminal Rise and Rise-fall Tunes in East Norwegian Intonation

This paper argues that there is a phonological opposition between falling and non-falling utterance-terminal tunes in East Norwegian intonation. East Norwegian intonational foci are characterized by a rising pitch movement and there is no way that you can raise the pitch even further to express “rising intonation”. What you obtain instead is a distinction between a focal rise followed by a terminal fall in pitch and a focal rise without a subsequent falling terminal. The falling vs. non-falling terminal contrast is utilized differently in Intonation Units (IUs) with just one Intonational Phrase (IP) than in IUs with more than one Intonational Phrase. In the former type of IU structure a falling terminal constrains the illocutionary potential of the communicative act; in the latter type the falling terminal adds an attitudinal bias, without constraining the illocutionary potential. While most non-falling and falling terminals in connected discourse can ultimately be related to the difference between “openness” and “finality”, respectively, this intonational contrast is shown to have a seemingly quite different function in imperatives.

Networking, Publications

Volume 17 Number 3 of the Arkansas Business and Economic Review contains an article by Lynn Godkin entitled “Anticipated Job Satisfaction: Attitudinal Bias Among Women”. The author queried a sample of 253 women (enrolled in courses offered by a college of business) concerning how satisfied they expected to be with various aspects of their initial jobs following graduation. It was found that married women had decidedly different feelings about particular aspects of their jobs than those expressed by unmarried women. While satisfaction with specific job factors did not move with age, it did vary within age groups. Further, it was determined that as the amount of cumulative full‐time work experience increased so did the level of expected satisfaction increase with respect to freedom in the work place and reward based on merit or productivity.

Rehabilitation: Focus on Disabled Women as a Special Population

Being female and physically disabled in our society is a double handicap which gives rise to unique problems and needs. The situation of disabled women requires special skills and knowledge on the part of the rehabilitation practitioner. Past inequities in training, education and service provision have resulted in physically disabled women being underemployed, unemployed, or low status positions. Effective work with disabled women requires that professionals understand the issues of being female and disabled, increase their awareness of individual attitudinal biases, and broaden skills in dealing with this unique population. Rehabilitation counselors, educators and administrators need to take a proactive stance to advocate for disabled women as well as provide fair and equitable services.

The relevance of problems encountered in attitudinal research: a personal perspective.

The narrative gives an overview of problems encountered in conducting attitudinal research which include: difficulties with sampling procedures, attitudinal measurement, and attitudinal biases. Implications for researchers include: the need to address the attitudinal biases of each individual involved in the research and the need to develop valid and acceptable attitudinal assessment instruments.

"Homophobia" or homosexual bias reconsidered.

Recent investigation into negative reactions to homosexuals has yielded a new concept, homophobia. This concept has been used to describe cultural, attitudinal, and personal biases against homosexuals. Such a broad usage of the concept threatens to restrict understanding of negative reactions to homosexuals, and to restrict more useful investigations into the possible sources of homosexual bias. It is suggested that the concept of homophobia be abandoned in favor of another concept such as homosexual bias, except in rare cases where anxiety arousal leads to overt phobic avoidance. It is hoped that this clarification will open up new areas of investigation and lead to a deeper understanding of negative reactions to homosexuals on social and personal levels.

Deinstitutionalization: Avoiding the Disasters of the Past

The reasons for the problems created by deinstitutionalization have only recently become clear; they include a lack of consensus about the movement, no real testing of its philosophic bases, the lack of planning for alternative facilities and services (especially for a population with notable social and cognitive deficits), and the inadequacies of the mental health delivery system in general. Providing care for the chronically ill and preparing for future deinstitutionalization means that the issue must be reconceptualized not as one of where people should be housed but as the need to provide the full range of treatments and services that are available in a total institution. Attitudinal and institutional biases and discriminatory practices must be combated, planning for community facilities and services must be improved, and funding for both institutional and community services must be provided during the phasing down of institutional services. The author proposes a set of ten commandments or basic rules to guide future deinstitutionalization activities.

Capital-intensity biases in developing country technology choice

Under-employment in developing economies has been attributed to technological determinism or factor-price distortion. The present paper proposes a third view: biases towards capital- intensive techniques which stem from non-economic preferences on the part of engineers, designers, managers, and policy-makers. A fourth possible bias, consumer choice, is discussed and considered less significant. The paper emphasizes engineering biases based on the designers' maximization of ‘technical efficiency’ which is defined in a manner distinct from factor efficiency. Policy implications are that direct action to change attitudinal biases and stimulate development of labour-intensive techniques can contribute considerably to the optimal choice stimulus of corrected factor prices.

A conceptual model for attitude assessment in all areas of medical education.

In most medical schools attitudinal goals are confined to special courses in the curriculum and, as such, remain isolated. Failure to attend to both psychosocial and physical factors of disease are compounded by faculty failure to integrate both principles into teaching strategies. Here a conceptual model is proposed to ensure that psychosocial factors, age, and physical illness are all considered in the planning of educational units. Examples are given of skill impairment pitfalls that, when included in a patient-management problem (PMP), allow faculty to assess potential student attitudinal bias and identify students for additional learning experiences. Further application of this model can help educators plan course work in order to narrow the present gulf between the physical and behavioral sciences.

Skimming and Scanning Improvement: The Needs, Assumptions and Knowledge Base

The best way, and perhaps the only way, for today's student to cope with the effects of the information explosion on college reading lists is to become a competent and confident skimmer and scanner. Despite this obvious “need,” it is difficult to get students to skim and scan because of the negative attitudinal biases of both students and teachers. As a result, these skills are either ignored or not taught effectively. Failure to teach skimming and scanning skills is postulated as the reason many reading programs fail to produce flexible readers. Evidence is presented that skimming and scanning skills can be taught effectively. The results of a series of studies conducted in the process of developing and field-testing a skimming and scanning improvement program are described and their implications discussed.

Components of and Neutralizing Factors in the Effects of Closed-Mindedness on the Learning of Controversial Material

This study deals with the general problem of whether, to what extent, and how closed-mindedness affects the meaningful learning of controversial material contrary to belief. It particularly seeks to identify various logically discriminable aspects of closed-mindedness, to determine their respective effects on learning controversial material, and to test the efficacy of proposed neutralizing factors in counteracting the effects of closed-mindedness on such learning. In Rokeach's (1960) pioneering conceptualization of closed-mindedness, both the structure of the trait and the relationship between closed-mindedness and dogmatism are left unresolved. Our view of the dogmatism-closed-mindedness relationship is that dogmatism is only one aspect of closed-mindedness-that aspect which is reflective of a generalized personality trait or characteristic of cognitive style that an individual brings into any learning situation when he is confronted by controversial views contrary to his belief system, irrespective of the topic or issue in question. Rokeach, in our opinion, neglects two other crucial aspects of closed-mindedness both of which are specific to a particular issue, namely, an affective component (attitudinal bias) and a cognitive component (informational bias). To understand adequately how any given individual will respond to a controversial learning task contrary to his beliefs, one must consider all three components of closed-mindedness. Bearing these three components in mind, one can readily appreciate why persons who are

The reliability and validity of measures of family life and relationships in families containing a psychiatric patient

Several studies have highlighted the burden on the families of mentally ill patients and so emphasised the need to investigate the effects of illness on family life and relationships. — A review of the literature showed that many of the published measures of the family lacked satisfactory reliability and validity. — A methodological study of 30 families in all of which there were children of school age or younger and in which one parent had newly attended a psychiatric facility is reported. For each family there was a 2–3 hour interview with the patient, a 3–4 hour interview with the spouse and a third interview of about an hour with the two of them together. At each interview there were two investigators who made independent ratings. There were different investigators for each of the three interviews so that there were 6 investigators and 6 sets of independent ratings for each family. — A basic distinction was made between concrete happenings or activities in the family, on the one hand and, on the other, feelings, emotions or attitudes concerning these events or the individuals participating in them. An interview designed to measure both types of variables is described. By the use of a particular kind of flexible and detailed questioning about recent events an attempt was made to free the measurement of events and activities from attitudinal biases. A different approach was used for the measurement of emotions. By the use of tape recordings and group discussions, interviewers were trained to recognise and rate differences in tone of voice as shown in the speed, pitch and intensity of speech. The third main type of scale consisted of overall summary ratings of relationships. — Each type of scale is illustrated by a number of examples for which detailed results are given. These are ‘warmth’ and ‘number of critical remarks’ as examples of ‘emotional’ scales, ‘participation of husband and wife in household tasks’ and ‘frequency of irritable acts’ as examples of scales of events or happenings, and ‘overall assessment of the marriage’ as a summary scale. Details are also given on the scale measuring ‘parent preferred by the child’ which does not readily fit into any of these 3 main categories. — High inter-rater reliability was demonstrated for the emotional scales. Respondent and rater biases were not found. By comparison of ratings made in different interviews, it was shown that similar feelings were expressed about the spouse in different situations, suggesting that the ratings were valid as well as reliable. A person's report of someone else's emotions, on the other hand, appeared to have a low level of validity in spite of good reliability. — Inter-rater reliability for the measures of activities and for the overall summary ratings was also high and, more important, it was shown that there was good agreement between the accounts of husbands and wives when interviewed separately. — A detailed examination was made of possible factors influencing husband-wife agreement. Slight biases associated with dissatisfaction and patient status were found but these were not sufficient to influence conclusions in most instances. Ways of reducing such bias are discussed.